


do not stand by my grave and weep

by displayheartcode



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, Gen, Immortality, Introspection, Not Beta Read, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25264321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/displayheartcode/pseuds/displayheartcode
Summary: Immortality means different things to each of them.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 29
Kudos: 271





	do not stand by my grave and weep

> **_Nile_ **

Nile tries to keep a routine. It’s what Joe recommends in the middle of an impromptu Russian lesson. She knows each comment, every little suggestion made by Nicky and Joe is meant to help fill the empty space where Booker used to be. A cautionary tale about grief and losing yourself in the depths of your immortality.

Still, Niles needs a routine – she knows this as a former marine. She needs the cold morning air, steady footfalls on rain-slicked earth, something to help clear her mind before history swallows her whole like Jonah in the belly of the whale.

 _Keep moving,_ she tells herself as she laces her shoes by the door. The cottage they all are laying low at is surrounding by thick woods and winding pathways meant for bikers and children lost in fairytales. _Keep moving_ , Niles thinks as she forces her body to make it to another mile. _Keep_ _moving_ as all if the other thoughts – her deaths, Andy’s mortality, the people she killed and left behind, the crushing future – fall away until there is only her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

But no matter how fast she runs, she can’t escape the sound of her mother’s cries and the knowledge of an empty grave next to her father’s.

> **_Joe_ **

Joe flips his sketchbook to a new page, twirling the charcoal pencil between his fingers as the tourists gawk at the exhibits. Nicky mummers something but Joe is distracted by the grainy photography on the walls, the burned-out shells of London flats, a pockmarked sky, the blurry motions of everyday people trying to survive that look more like ghosts than human beings.

 _I was there,_ he remembers. The taste of ashes and blood fills his mouth as he draws a memory of the Blitz.

“Yusuf,” Nicky says again. He slips an arm around Joe’s shoulder, directing him to where a crowd gathers by one of the exhibits. Smoke-stained pieces of paper next to black-and-white photographs, Andy’s ferocious stance as she shields a couple from a heavy downpour, Booker standing among the wreckage of a home, cradling a terrified cat in his arms, Nicky holding a torch that cuts through the night as he searches for survivors.

Joe can’t breathe.

“We may not know the artist behind these sketches,” the tour guide says in a soft accent, gesturing to the self-portrait of Joe swathed in fog, a first-aid kit in hand, “or of their fate, but we have documented proof how no act of human kindness is wasted.”

Nicky leans his head against Joe’s shoulder, and they listen together.

> **_Andy_ **

Andy feels a new wave of pain. She throws her punches against the bag, not caring that her shirt is sticking to her skin with sweat, that her bandages need to be replaced. In the back of her mind, the memories stir at each forceful impact. Andy remembers wars lost to history, people bleeding out by her feet, her hands automatically learning how to kill, the languages she can no longer speak, but the rest is a haze like a morning mist.

The only thing clear enough is the weight of her ax.

 _The famous and the unknown._ Copely’s wall of pictures and documents, all blood-red underlines making sense of her life, her actions. _When you think about how old you are, the good you’ve done for humanity becomes exponential._

But she is so _tired_.

Andy wheezes, stumbling to catch her breath. She puts both hands flat against the bag and steadies herself. Vertigo causes the whole world to slant to the side. She takes a deep breath and resumes her earlier position, wincing at the stitch in her side. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the gym’s mirrored wall, the bruises that have yet to heal, her mortality fresh like a bleeding wound.

This is what the immortal warrior, what the Andromache of Scythia has become.

Human. Bleeding.

Exhausted.

 _But you’ll help someone up when they fall._

She offers her reflection a vicious smile and goes through the set again.

> _**Nicky** _

Nicky wakes in Joe’s arms. The night is long and cool here, the hint of fireflies by their bedroom window, the lavender that still grows after a century of planting, Joe’s steady breathing with the occasional whisper in a lost language. Carefully, Nicky untangles himself and pads across the aged floor, a curiosity burning inside of him as he opens desk drawers and pulls boxes out from inside their shared closet.

“What are you doing?” Joe asks in sleep-strained Arabic.

Nicky hums a song he once heard on the radio a good two decades ago. He finds the journal packed between newspaper crossword puzzles from Joe’s last hobby. He flips through the pages almost idly until a phrase stands out as if outlined in gold.

“When we last lived here,” Nicky says. “You wrote me this.” He clears his throat and reads the passage aloud, the language shifting from one dialect to another, each full of tender love in their declarations. He stops in a sudden laugh at the accompanying illustrations done in pen and ink. “I remember this.”

Joe beckons him to come back to bed so they can remember together.

> **_Booker_ **

Clumsy in his grief, he drops down on the dank stairs of his cheap flat and lets the whiskey spills from its bottle.

Around Booker, the ghosts of his children and wife look down at him with their pale faces, his youngest coughing up blood, the oldest dying from his wounds, but their voices are Andy, Nicky, Joe, and Nile, each rising in a whiskey-induced chorus.

_You betrayed us, you hurt us,_

_And yet you still can’t find your peace._


End file.
